Waldorf Methods/Sciences 2
Introduction
" ... ancient wisdom contained no contradiction between body and soul or between nature and spirit; because one knew: Spirit is in man in its archetypal form; the soul is none other than the message transmitted by spirit; the body is the image of spirit. Likewise, no contract was felt between man and surrounding nature because one bore an image of spirit in one's own body, and the same was true of every body in external nature. Hence, an inner kinship was experienced between one's own body and those in outer nature, and nature was not felt to be different from oneself. Man felt himself at one with the whole world. He could feel this because he could behold the archetype of spirit and because the cosmic expanses spoke to him. In consequence of the universe speaking to man, science simply could not exist. Just as we today cannot build a science of external nature out of what lives in our memory, ancient man could not develop one because, whether he looked into himself or outward at nature, he beheld the same image of spirit. No contrast existed between man himself and nature, and there was none between soul and body. The correspondence of soul and body was such that, in a manner of speaking, the body was only the vessel, the artistic reproduction, of the spiritual archetype, while the soul was the mediating messenger between the two. Everything as in a state of intimate union. There could be no question of comprehending anything. We grasp and comprehend what is outside our own life. Anything that we carry within ourselves is directly experienced and need not be first comprehended. ... Precisely because man had lost the connection with nature, he now sought a science of nature from outside." - Rudolf Steiner in "The Origins of Natural Science."
In Waldorf education, the science subjects do not start with nor are built from theories and formulas. Rather they start with the phenomena and develop in an experiential way, by first presenting the phenomenon, having the students make detailed observations, then guiding the students to derive the concepts that arise from the phenomena, and finally deriving the scientific formulas and laws behind the phenomena.This methodology reflects the way basic science actually has been developed by scientists and trains the pupils stepwise in basic scientific thinking and reflection on the basis of personal experience and observation of the phenomena of nature and the history of science. In kindergarten and the lower grades, the experience of nature through the seasons is brought to the children through nature walks, nature tables and observation of nature around. In later grades, there are specific main lesson blocks dealing with Man and Animal, and other themes. In grade 5, scientific ideas may be taught historically through the study of the Greeks, for example, Aristotle, Archimedes and Pythagoras. In grades 6-8 the science curriculum becomes more focused with blocks on physics (optics, acoustics, mechanics, magnetism and electricity), botany, chemistry (inorganic and organic), and anatomy. In high school, science is taught by specialists who have received college level training in biology, chemistry and physics and these three subjects are taught in each of the 4 years of high school. Course Outlines
Waldorf Methods/Sciences 1
Lesson 1: Chemistry/Kindergarten/Grades Lesson 2: Chemistry/Classes 9 - 12 Lesson 3: Physics/Introduction Lesson 4: Physics/Classes 6 - 8 Lesson 5: Physics/Classes 9 - 12 Waldorf Methods/Sciences 2 Lesson 1: Life Sciences/Introduction Lesson 2: Life Sciences/Classes 4 - 5 Lesson 3: Life Sciences/Classes 6 -8 Lesson 4: Life Sciences/Classes 9 -10 Lesson 5: Life Sciences/Classes 11 -12 Waldorf Methods/Sciences 3 Lesson 1: Geography/Introduction Lesson 2: Geography/Classes 1 - 8 Lesson 3: Geography/Classes 9 - 12 Lesson 4: Gardening and Sustainable Living Lesson 5: Technology |
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Tasks and Assignments for Waldorf Methods/Sciences 2.5.
Please study and work with the study material provided for this lesson. Then please turn to the following tasks and assignments listed below.
1. Study the material provided and look up other resources as needed and appropriate.
2. Create examples of curriculum that addresses the learning method and content appropriate for the age group in question. Curriculum examples should include outlines and goals, activities, circle/games, stories, and illustrations/drawings:
Create 2 examples for this age group.
3. Additionally submit comments and questions, if any.
Please send your completed assignment via the online form or via email.
1. Study the material provided and look up other resources as needed and appropriate.
2. Create examples of curriculum that addresses the learning method and content appropriate for the age group in question. Curriculum examples should include outlines and goals, activities, circle/games, stories, and illustrations/drawings:
Create 2 examples for this age group.
3. Additionally submit comments and questions, if any.
Please send your completed assignment via the online form or via email.
Study Material for Waldorf Methods/Sciences Lesson 2.5.
Introduction/Upper School/High School/Life Sciences
The essential question in Upper School teaching is not how to spread the enormous range of content in the life sciences over the timetable, but rather: what best serves the developmental process of adolescence? What role can the life sciences play in helping the young person in their discovery of themselves and their understanding of the world? The pupils are not there for the subject, rather the subject is there for the pupils. Adolescence engages a deep range of hidden questions that young people become aware of and opportunities are needed throughout the curriculum for them to be articulated.
One area of immediate interest to the adolescent and one that holds the potential to address fundamental questions about life, death and the human condition is the study of what is conventionally known as human biology. However, biology implies the study of organisms, so this sets up an expectation that real knowledge about the human being comes through a study of the human physical body and its constituent parts and processes, cells and genes, all of which add up to make a person. Biology implies animals and plants, human biology being the particular study of a particular organism, a species of mammal whose nature can be explained as any animal can be - reproduction, survival etc. A higher animal, but animal nevertheless.
Classes 9 and 10
The title 'human science' already allows the possibility that such a study can include all human experience from self-awareness, creative genius and inner feelings, to bruises, sweating and digestion. This approach can engage Classes 9 and 10, and the question of whether humans evolved from animals can be left open for study in Classes 11 and 12.
Alongside the Classes 9 and 10 human science main -lessons (ten to twelve weeks over the two years in blocks of three or four weeks), other life science studies are taught.
Class 9 need to engage in practical fieldwork with observations and projects which have an emphasis on the care and renewal of the land - compo sting, planting trees, tending ponds and hedgerows, for example. These would then become the basis for classroom studies, which could retain their link to the whole context of the environment from which they arose.
In Class 10, the increased powers of thinking are well met through laboratory-based studies of a more conventional kind, where the control of different variables in the growth of plants or the relationship of water to soil, brings the forming of an hypothesis and the concept of experimental proof into focus. By postponing the usual early emphasis on hypothesis, measurement and proof until Class 10, intellectual clarity can be developed at the same time with losing a wide perspective on the living world.
Another feature of life science study in Classes 9 and 10 is the introduction of biographies through which scientists can appear as real human beings with whom young people can identify. The qualities that are needed in real scientific investigation, rather than cardboard textbook cameos, come to life: single-minded dedication, passion, meticulous observation, inspiration, creative and lateral thinking, co-operation with others, fortuitous meetings and conversations, as well as practical ability and clear thinking.
Class 11
In Class 11, young people's thinking powers have matured to form the basis for a power of judgement, which had been all too easily clouded by the passions and extremes of adolescence or swayed by peer group pressure.
With their thinking more in hand, they are ready for a focus on the ideas and ideals in contemporary science, such as cell theory and genetics (parallelled by the atomic theory in the earth science curriculum). By taking an historical approach, there is a context for the theories showing how they arose out of the previous ideas through particular personalities and key experiments.
The study of botany provides a good basis for this, with practical work on plant cells and use of the microscope and with practical genetics through the germination of seeds. Narrowing the view oflife through the microscope needs to be balanced by a macroscopic perspective. The study of landscape and of the major vegetation zones of the earth can provide this, and help in translating from one realm to the other can be given by projective geometry. The history of science provides a context, too, in which analytical and classificatory thinking (e.g. Linnaeus) rose to prominence, spawning a growth in knowledge about plants and a technology that advanced from fertilisers to genetic engineering. At the same time it reduced our relationship with the biosphere to a mosaic of factors, but no real wholeness.
The problems of the environment are the direct result of a certain way of thinking about the living world, which can be contrasted with Goethe's in a study of his method and approach to plants which emphasises exact observation, while retaining the context of the plant in its environment and its relationship to the whole.
The study of botany also provides the basis for consideration of the theory of evolution in general and Darwin's in particular, a theme to be taken up more strongly in Class 12.
Class 12
A holistic life science curriculum needs to make the human being central to enquiry into the nature of life. This has been an implicit theme throughout the Steiner-Waldorf curriculum from the kindergarten, articulated in ways appropriate to the age of the children.
Now, in Class 12, the issue needs to be raised in the fullest possible way so that environmental and ecological aspects can find their context within fundamental questions about the nature of the human being and the evolution of the earth. Social, political, spiritual and moral questions lie at the heart of an environmental education and all the Class 12 curriculum themes are relevant.
The focus in life science for Class 12 is zoology. The immense range of animal life is examined through considering the architecture of the main phyla. Each phyla establishes a new aspect ofindependence (e.g. from the water in reptiles, from the temperature in mammals) and consciousness (e.g. amoeba, insect colonies, dolphins). The question of evolution and a detailed study of Darwinism lead inevitably to the issue of the responsibility of the human beings for the earth and for all life, now that they possess the commercial power to exploit it to extinction and the technological power to manipulate it at the genetic level.
One area of immediate interest to the adolescent and one that holds the potential to address fundamental questions about life, death and the human condition is the study of what is conventionally known as human biology. However, biology implies the study of organisms, so this sets up an expectation that real knowledge about the human being comes through a study of the human physical body and its constituent parts and processes, cells and genes, all of which add up to make a person. Biology implies animals and plants, human biology being the particular study of a particular organism, a species of mammal whose nature can be explained as any animal can be - reproduction, survival etc. A higher animal, but animal nevertheless.
Classes 9 and 10
The title 'human science' already allows the possibility that such a study can include all human experience from self-awareness, creative genius and inner feelings, to bruises, sweating and digestion. This approach can engage Classes 9 and 10, and the question of whether humans evolved from animals can be left open for study in Classes 11 and 12.
Alongside the Classes 9 and 10 human science main -lessons (ten to twelve weeks over the two years in blocks of three or four weeks), other life science studies are taught.
Class 9 need to engage in practical fieldwork with observations and projects which have an emphasis on the care and renewal of the land - compo sting, planting trees, tending ponds and hedgerows, for example. These would then become the basis for classroom studies, which could retain their link to the whole context of the environment from which they arose.
In Class 10, the increased powers of thinking are well met through laboratory-based studies of a more conventional kind, where the control of different variables in the growth of plants or the relationship of water to soil, brings the forming of an hypothesis and the concept of experimental proof into focus. By postponing the usual early emphasis on hypothesis, measurement and proof until Class 10, intellectual clarity can be developed at the same time with losing a wide perspective on the living world.
Another feature of life science study in Classes 9 and 10 is the introduction of biographies through which scientists can appear as real human beings with whom young people can identify. The qualities that are needed in real scientific investigation, rather than cardboard textbook cameos, come to life: single-minded dedication, passion, meticulous observation, inspiration, creative and lateral thinking, co-operation with others, fortuitous meetings and conversations, as well as practical ability and clear thinking.
Class 11
In Class 11, young people's thinking powers have matured to form the basis for a power of judgement, which had been all too easily clouded by the passions and extremes of adolescence or swayed by peer group pressure.
With their thinking more in hand, they are ready for a focus on the ideas and ideals in contemporary science, such as cell theory and genetics (parallelled by the atomic theory in the earth science curriculum). By taking an historical approach, there is a context for the theories showing how they arose out of the previous ideas through particular personalities and key experiments.
The study of botany provides a good basis for this, with practical work on plant cells and use of the microscope and with practical genetics through the germination of seeds. Narrowing the view oflife through the microscope needs to be balanced by a macroscopic perspective. The study of landscape and of the major vegetation zones of the earth can provide this, and help in translating from one realm to the other can be given by projective geometry. The history of science provides a context, too, in which analytical and classificatory thinking (e.g. Linnaeus) rose to prominence, spawning a growth in knowledge about plants and a technology that advanced from fertilisers to genetic engineering. At the same time it reduced our relationship with the biosphere to a mosaic of factors, but no real wholeness.
The problems of the environment are the direct result of a certain way of thinking about the living world, which can be contrasted with Goethe's in a study of his method and approach to plants which emphasises exact observation, while retaining the context of the plant in its environment and its relationship to the whole.
The study of botany also provides the basis for consideration of the theory of evolution in general and Darwin's in particular, a theme to be taken up more strongly in Class 12.
Class 12
A holistic life science curriculum needs to make the human being central to enquiry into the nature of life. This has been an implicit theme throughout the Steiner-Waldorf curriculum from the kindergarten, articulated in ways appropriate to the age of the children.
Now, in Class 12, the issue needs to be raised in the fullest possible way so that environmental and ecological aspects can find their context within fundamental questions about the nature of the human being and the evolution of the earth. Social, political, spiritual and moral questions lie at the heart of an environmental education and all the Class 12 curriculum themes are relevant.
The focus in life science for Class 12 is zoology. The immense range of animal life is examined through considering the architecture of the main phyla. Each phyla establishes a new aspect ofindependence (e.g. from the water in reptiles, from the temperature in mammals) and consciousness (e.g. amoeba, insect colonies, dolphins). The question of evolution and a detailed study of Darwinism lead inevitably to the issue of the responsibility of the human beings for the earth and for all life, now that they possess the commercial power to exploit it to extinction and the technological power to manipulate it at the genetic level.
Life Sciences/Classes 11 - 12
Class 11
Here are some examples out of the wide range of topics that could be chosen for anyone particular class.
* History of the microscope: from the early Dutch lens makers (e.g. Lievenhoek) to the electron microscope. The scanning electron microscope reveals the richness of form, even at a magnification of 50,000. Experience in the preparation of slides allows pupils a more critical appreciation of the magnification, clarity and the colour of the images and diagrams seen in books etc.
* The plant cell: a detailed study of its main features
- The importance of the cytoplasm in relation to the nucleus
- Mitosis and meiosis
- Sexual and asexual reproduction
- Boundaries of plant/animal (e.g. Euglena, Chlamydomonas)
* Genetics
- Mendel's experiments and their modern interpretation in breeding
- Chromosomes, genes, DNA: the essential features of genetic engineering
* Classification: features of some of the major phyla: algae, fungi, lichens, ferns, mosses, grasses, conifers, flowering plants
* Ecology
- The role of plants in photosynthesis, decomposition and nitrogenation within the carbon and nitrogen cycles and in the hydrosphere
- Relationship to animals (e.g. seeds/herbivores/pollination)
* Plant and insect relationships: examples of unique inter-dependent relationships
* Plant and landscape
- The precious nature of soil structure and its community of organisms.
- Trees, grasses and soil erosion, on a small and large scale
- Diversity in forests and animal habitats
- Monoculture and overgrazing
* Earth as biosphere: a consideration of the whole Earth provides a balance to the microscope and genetic details.
* Goethe's botanical studies: an historical and practical introduction to a Goethean approach to plant and landscape observation. Current research along the same line.
* Agriculture and forestry: a consideration of the degree to which cultivation of the plant world has been distorted by other values (e.g. consumerism) and how the distribution of plant resources (e.g. food, timber) over the world is subject to commercial and political factors (e.g. the patenting of genes and terminator technology).
Class 12
Here are some examples out of the wide range of topics that could be chosen for anyone particular class.
Some of the botany could be carried over from Class 11, but the main focus for Class 12 is zoology, with an introduction to the main phyla and their diversity.
The opportunity should also be taken to select detailed features which touch key issues in biological theory and raise fundamental questions about the relationship of human beings to the animal world.
Some examples below:
* morifera (sponges) - the sieving of a sponge through a nylon mesh and its ability to regenerate as a colony with form and function
* coelenterata (hydra) - the ability of the sea slug to ingest hydra without triggering the nematocysts, then to use those nematocysts within their own skins as a defensive mechanism
* mollusca - the unexpected complexity of the eye of the squid, which anticipates the mammalian eye well before the evolution of mammals
* arthropods - the complex structure of hives and colonies; metamorphosis and the re- constitution of living organisms
* Echinodermata - the embryonic development of the starfish shows that lateral symmetry (fundamental to the architecture of higher animals) develops first before radial symmetry overwhelms it
* Vertebrate development from the point of view of an increasing independence from the environment e.g. regulation of warmth and the internalisation of organs such as the lungs
* Evolution, including an historical appreciation of the development of a Darwinian interpretation of evolution, the fossil record (accounts of fakes and frauds such as the Ichthyosaurus fake in Museum of Wales, Piltdown Man, the Brontosaurus, Archaeoraptor Liaoningensis, might be examined alongside reliable samples, including Charles Walcott's discoveries in the 'Burgess Shale')
* Comparative embryological development and the polarity of precocial and altricial development
* Ethical questions of biological and medical intervention in human, animal and plant life
* Conservation and human responsibility for stewardship of the earth's biological resources - philosophical, economic, political, social aspects of environmental degradation. The task of education and the urgency of changing attitudes. The role of tourism and consumerism on world habitats
* The overall aim of the movement curriculum is to support the central process of integrating the child's soul-spiritual being with the bodily organisation through the medium of movement.
* This aspect of the curriculum assists the development of the child's sense of movement, spatial awareness, sense of balance and inner equilibrium and sense of bodily well being through fine and gross motor control. The movement curriculum seeks to help the child to form and differentiate her overall awareness and control of her movement organisation and be able to marshal its energies in the places at the right time, thus enabling the child to direct those forces in a meaningful way.
* The curriculum aims to assist the child to transform the activity of the movement organisation, thus bringing inner mobility to thinking, feeling and willing, thus enabling a more complete expression of individual intention.
* The curriculum works to support the child's developmental path in age-appropriate ways.
* The nature of the movement organisation is such that an imagination of an action occurs before the actual movement is physically carried out. The relationship between the movement organisation and imagination is an intimate one. Thus the teaching method requires that the children be given meaningful and age-appropriate pictures as an impulse to movement or activity.
* In supporting the child's developing movement organisation, a basis is formed for social interactions, social skills through awareness of other people in relation to the self and thus to real social competence.
* The movement curriculum seeks to support and complement other aspects of the curriculum.
Here are some examples out of the wide range of topics that could be chosen for anyone particular class.
* History of the microscope: from the early Dutch lens makers (e.g. Lievenhoek) to the electron microscope. The scanning electron microscope reveals the richness of form, even at a magnification of 50,000. Experience in the preparation of slides allows pupils a more critical appreciation of the magnification, clarity and the colour of the images and diagrams seen in books etc.
* The plant cell: a detailed study of its main features
- The importance of the cytoplasm in relation to the nucleus
- Mitosis and meiosis
- Sexual and asexual reproduction
- Boundaries of plant/animal (e.g. Euglena, Chlamydomonas)
* Genetics
- Mendel's experiments and their modern interpretation in breeding
- Chromosomes, genes, DNA: the essential features of genetic engineering
* Classification: features of some of the major phyla: algae, fungi, lichens, ferns, mosses, grasses, conifers, flowering plants
* Ecology
- The role of plants in photosynthesis, decomposition and nitrogenation within the carbon and nitrogen cycles and in the hydrosphere
- Relationship to animals (e.g. seeds/herbivores/pollination)
* Plant and insect relationships: examples of unique inter-dependent relationships
* Plant and landscape
- The precious nature of soil structure and its community of organisms.
- Trees, grasses and soil erosion, on a small and large scale
- Diversity in forests and animal habitats
- Monoculture and overgrazing
* Earth as biosphere: a consideration of the whole Earth provides a balance to the microscope and genetic details.
* Goethe's botanical studies: an historical and practical introduction to a Goethean approach to plant and landscape observation. Current research along the same line.
* Agriculture and forestry: a consideration of the degree to which cultivation of the plant world has been distorted by other values (e.g. consumerism) and how the distribution of plant resources (e.g. food, timber) over the world is subject to commercial and political factors (e.g. the patenting of genes and terminator technology).
Class 12
Here are some examples out of the wide range of topics that could be chosen for anyone particular class.
Some of the botany could be carried over from Class 11, but the main focus for Class 12 is zoology, with an introduction to the main phyla and their diversity.
The opportunity should also be taken to select detailed features which touch key issues in biological theory and raise fundamental questions about the relationship of human beings to the animal world.
Some examples below:
* morifera (sponges) - the sieving of a sponge through a nylon mesh and its ability to regenerate as a colony with form and function
* coelenterata (hydra) - the ability of the sea slug to ingest hydra without triggering the nematocysts, then to use those nematocysts within their own skins as a defensive mechanism
* mollusca - the unexpected complexity of the eye of the squid, which anticipates the mammalian eye well before the evolution of mammals
* arthropods - the complex structure of hives and colonies; metamorphosis and the re- constitution of living organisms
* Echinodermata - the embryonic development of the starfish shows that lateral symmetry (fundamental to the architecture of higher animals) develops first before radial symmetry overwhelms it
* Vertebrate development from the point of view of an increasing independence from the environment e.g. regulation of warmth and the internalisation of organs such as the lungs
* Evolution, including an historical appreciation of the development of a Darwinian interpretation of evolution, the fossil record (accounts of fakes and frauds such as the Ichthyosaurus fake in Museum of Wales, Piltdown Man, the Brontosaurus, Archaeoraptor Liaoningensis, might be examined alongside reliable samples, including Charles Walcott's discoveries in the 'Burgess Shale')
* Comparative embryological development and the polarity of precocial and altricial development
* Ethical questions of biological and medical intervention in human, animal and plant life
* Conservation and human responsibility for stewardship of the earth's biological resources - philosophical, economic, political, social aspects of environmental degradation. The task of education and the urgency of changing attitudes. The role of tourism and consumerism on world habitats
* The overall aim of the movement curriculum is to support the central process of integrating the child's soul-spiritual being with the bodily organisation through the medium of movement.
* This aspect of the curriculum assists the development of the child's sense of movement, spatial awareness, sense of balance and inner equilibrium and sense of bodily well being through fine and gross motor control. The movement curriculum seeks to help the child to form and differentiate her overall awareness and control of her movement organisation and be able to marshal its energies in the places at the right time, thus enabling the child to direct those forces in a meaningful way.
* The curriculum aims to assist the child to transform the activity of the movement organisation, thus bringing inner mobility to thinking, feeling and willing, thus enabling a more complete expression of individual intention.
* The curriculum works to support the child's developmental path in age-appropriate ways.
* The nature of the movement organisation is such that an imagination of an action occurs before the actual movement is physically carried out. The relationship between the movement organisation and imagination is an intimate one. Thus the teaching method requires that the children be given meaningful and age-appropriate pictures as an impulse to movement or activity.
* In supporting the child's developing movement organisation, a basis is formed for social interactions, social skills through awareness of other people in relation to the self and thus to real social competence.
* The movement curriculum seeks to support and complement other aspects of the curriculum.